Viridarium Umbris
by Al
I’m in luck. I thought that I had missed out on getting Viridarium Umbris from Schulke because I hadn’t preordered it a while back. It turns out that Fields Books in San Francisco is the distributor of the book for the west coast. I paid a slightly higher price but a copy of it is on its way to me today.
A description of the book:
An extensive grimorium of Wortcunning, or herb-magic, the Pleasure-Garden treats of the secret knowledge of trees and herbs as delivered by the Fallen Angels unto mankind. The book’s principal concerns are the sorcery and gnosis of the Greenwood, as arising from the varied luminaries of the Eternal Gardens of the Arte Magical. As a grimoire of Spiritual Botany, the Book is a Hortus Conclusus of text and image intended for the indwelling of these plant-spirits.
The work encompasses magical practices, formulae, and mystical exegesis, all treating the respective arcana of Nature-Spirits and the powers of individual plants. Much of the magical foci are on devotion, purity, humility, silence, solitude, and the hieros-gamos of wortcunner and plant as a tutelary relationship, in conjunction with the Mysteries of Cain, first tiller of the soil. The whole is intended as a textual reification of the Green Arts within the context of the Sabbatic Craft Tradition, and within the greater ambit of Brythonic plantlore and folk magic.
Comments
Hi Al:
I’ll be interested in hearing how Schulke’s book compares to Paul Beyerl’s Compendium of Herbal Magick. Of course there’s no comparison in terms of the way Schulke’s book was published. I’m more interested in knowing specific attributions: how each author describes the magical properties of the various herbs, plants, trees, etc.
The one thing that does put me off somewhat are the biblical references: fallen angels, Cain and Abel, etc., but I guess that’s the Western Mystery Tradition for you.
I don’t have Beryl’s book so I cannot really compare though I know his work and have met him.
The angels, Cain, etc. bit is part and parcel to this particular tradition. It works well in context.
is it possable to get a pdf version of this book
It might be possible but not from me. Do you really think that random blog posts are how to go about it? :-)
I would suggest contacting the author. I own a physical copy after all.